Comments: The pattern does not have stripes. I just made random sized stripes as I went along. It's a nice pattern. Easy to follow, well written. At the time of this writing, it's a free download on Ravelry.

I got the Broncos logo patch on Ebay. It's an iron on patch, but I sewed it on because I didn't want to damage the Acrylic. Worked great. I also slightly stretched the fabric under the logo so it wouldn't pull in when the hat is being worn.

Comments: I used the rib and stripe patterns in the hat and made it up as I went. I really like how they turned out.

I added a small Hickory Farms box of snacks, and one of those single drink bottles of Jamesons whiskey. Called it a fan kit. Shawn is very happy with his gift.

Weather report: no more snow for awhile. The clouds have cleared up and the sun is shining. However it's cold. We're going to have clear frigid days for the next week. Single digit night temperatures. So the snow isn't melting anytime soon.

12/27/14

I hope you had a good Christmas day. I know I did. I got awesome gifts from my family, and had an absolutely wonderful time at our friends house for Christmas dinner. We played cards until almost midnight. We also took Cable with us, and she was so very good. She was disappointed because their dog Tico, who is a Chihuahua, didn't want to play, but that is because Tico is getting very old now. I thought he was extremely patient with her under the circumstances.

My Christmas presents are chocolates of various kinds, a necklace with a jeweled dog paw print pendant, some doo-dads for my kitchen including purple chip bag clips, a nice heavy meat tenderizer, and a garlic press. I also got a pack of Star Trek TOS playing cards and a Knitpicks Velvet Glove Palette yarn sampler set. 10 balls of Palette fingering yarn in different shades of purple. YAY! The biggest surprise, though, was a new 500 gig hard drive for my laptop. It's not installed yet. Hubby had some problems trying to clone my old drive onto the new one, which he wants to do before installing it, so there's a delay until he can figure out why it isn't working. (Computers never work the way they say they will. Especially when the manual says 'easy install'.)

This weekend the Parkarosa Bird Buffet has been very very busy. There are so many Pine Siskins it loos like the plum tree has leaves again. We also have Chickadees, Red Breasted Nuthatches, more House Finches than you can shake a stick at, and several Woodpeckers. Best of all, the Red Crossbills are back. I managed to get some pics yesterday.

This is the first Red Crossbill that came to the feeder. We thought he was alone here, except the 2 Pine Siskins of course, but when I loaded the pic into my laptop we could see that his mate is actually at the feeder too on the back side. You can see her head through the feeder.

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She never did come out where we could see her.

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I managed to get some pics of this Hairy Woodpecker too. It's hard to take their pictures cuz they don't stay still for more than a second or two.

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He was very interested in the suet block.

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We did not have any snow for Christmas, but we've got it today! It started snowing early this morning and has not stopped since. We've got about 4 inches and climbing. Tonight is the Park family Christmas dinner. We decided to do it tonight instead of Christmas eve. I will be giving my nephew the present I've made him. Pics of this project will be posted later this week.

12/19/14

Each year I like to set myself some kind of goal, or theme for my knitting. This year was supposed to be the year of sweaters for me. I have one finished, and one more than halfway done, so I consider it a success.

One of the things I've been thinking about getting into for quite some time is colorwork mittens in the style of Latvia/Estonia/Norway. I've decided 2015 will be the year of colorwork mittens. Over the last few months I have obtained some awesome books on the subject. They aren't in English, exactly, but the patterns are easy to figure out, and wonderful. Many of them come from mittens in various museums. Each book does have an English translation of some of the information written in the book. So I can learn from them.

I was reading Suur kindaraamat last night and found it to be very interesting. In Estonia, mittens have always been very important to their culture. Girls were taught to knit mittens very early in life and would knit dozens of pairs that they saved for their wedding day to give to the wedding guests. She also would knit a pair of white ones for her groom. After marriage, they would knit mittens for their funeral, not to be put on themselves, but for the attendees and the officiants of said funeral. An Estonian woman would knit hundreds of pairs of mittens over her lifetime for herself, her family, and her community. I find that fascinating.

I started this mitten earlier this month. I have made some progress on it.

It got shoved aside to finish the Christmas knitting. That's done as of last night. HURRAY! (No pics until after Christmas though.) So it's back to it I go, and the moose sweater too, of course. I might not get hundreds done, but I expect it to be a very interesting knitting year. I've already learned how to knit braids. They're super easy, and so decorative!

I am so glad to have the Christmas knitting done. The Christmas shopping is done too. Just need to wrap everything up. I'm gonna work on that this weekend.

We got a little bit of snow this week, but mostly, when there's been precipitation, it's been rain.

I haven't beaded in ages. I'm missing it terribly. I need to make some time to get back to it.

12/16/14

Our Christmas tree is up and decorated. Hurray! We went with a purple theme this year.

I've had those giant purple silk poinsettia flowers for several years and this is the first time I've used them-mostly because I would forget about them every year. This time I remembered! HA HA! My sister in law, Kathryn, has lent me a box of her old fashioned purple fruit ornaments too. They're pretty cool. I appreciate her generosity. I don't really have very many purple ornaments in my collection. Most years my trees are not purple.

Speaking of purple, I know I said I was going to do a WIP Wednesday post last week featuring my moose sweater, but it didn't happen, obviously. I just didn't have time to do it, so I'm doing it now. Here is my purple moose sweater. I've finished the whole bottom chart/moose legs and have started on the moose body. It's so much fun to see it gradually beginning to appear!

What's really amazing is I'm making very few mistakes as I knit. I have the main stitch pattern completely memorized, so I just have to look at the chart for the moose part. I'm really enjoying this project. I wish I could work on it more than I do. Maybe after I get the Christmas knitting done.

So close to having it done. The Christmas knitting, that is. I thought I'd finish today while at the Rathdrum Knitalong meeting, but I made a huge mistake last night. I discovered it at the meeting and ended up frogging half of it, so I came home with less done than I'd left home with. Urg. I hate it when that happens. At least I spotted the error before I bound off the whole thing and called it done!

As I type this, it's gently snowing out. Teeny tiny fluffy little flakes. Maybe we will have a white Christmas after all.

12/9/14

She arrived a week ago, but I didn't get a chance to take her picture until last night. This is my new Lammily doll. I've named her Josephine.

She's the new 'normal' size doll that I joined a kickstarter campaign for. She has the normal body proportions of a 19 year old teenage girl. I like her. She's cute, has nice hair, and her arm and knee joints bend. I do not like her feet. They are jointed at the ankle and are way too loose. I have to either lean her against something, or use a stand to stand her up. (I ordered a stand yesterday) I need to make her some decent clothes. The Lammily company are scheduled to release clothes to purchase for her in January. I've preordered a couple outfits, but that doesn't stop me from knitting something for her now. Workin' on something already.

I am hoping she becomes popular. I don't know though. Properly proportioned dolls have been introduced in the past and ended in failure. Keeping my fingers crossed this doll doesn't suffer the same fate.

I had a good weekend. I finished two Christmas gift projects, one sewn, one knitted. I'll not be putting them on the blog until after Christmas, of course.

I worked on the Moose sweater too. Got a few more rows done. I'm over halfway done with the body. I plan to take pics for WIP Wednesday tomorrow.

We are having strange weather this winter. There's no snow on the ground. We've had way less precipitation so far than normal-rain or snow. Yesterday it was a gorgeous sunny day. I ended up sitting out in the hot tub in the sun for awhile. I felt the need to soak up some rays, and relax the tense muscles.

This week it's in the 40's and starting tonight we're supposed to get a lot of rain, which I welcome cuz we need it! It won't be snow though. I'm not used to being able to see the grass this late in the year.

Usually, I stop feeding the birds in May. Then I start up again when the ground is covered in snow. In past years that has been in November. Last week I noticed I wasn't hearing the chatter of birds that we usually have. It has been strangely quiet. It kind of scared me. What if the birds gave up on me and moved into town? I decided I wasn't waiting anymore and I put up the feeders last Friday. I was really worried the birds would not come, but they did. Chickadees found it yesterday and the word is out! The noisy chatter has returned and all is right with the world. My cats are thrilled. Bird tv has returned. They love to sit on the windowsill and watch them.

12/3/14

I have new WIPS. After finishing the cowl, I didn't have anything appropriate for KIP knitting, so I've started a couple projects.

First up is a pair of mittens. I've been wanting to get into making colorwork mittens in the styles of Lithuania/Latvia/Estonia/Norway for some time. I'd like to teach a class on the subject, so I've decided 2015 will be the year of colorwork mittens. I'm using a pattern from the online Knitty magazine called Warm Hearted. They start with a picot hem method that I'm familiar with because of my years of machine knitting. It's the first time I've done it in hand knitting. I like it.

Second is a hat. This will be a Christmas present for someone. That's all I'm saying about that. It will be in a nice stripe pattern using the colors you see in the pic. I'm using Plymouth Encore yarn, which is a very good quality acrylic with a little bit of wool in it.

I've got the yarn lined up for a KnitWits project, but haven't cast on yet. Probably later this week I'll get it started. The Christmas present has top priority at the moment.

Thanksgiving went well. Much better than I thought it would. We had Dan and Sue and their family, my sister-in-law Kathryn, Nephew Mike and his wife and kids, and our very good friends Don and Phyllis Kobaly and their son. We stretched our resources having 18 people at a sit down dinner though. Besides the dining room table, we had to set up the 2 folding mess tables. Took 3 table cloths. I was surprised I had that many. Didn't have enough chairs though, so we borrowed some from Sue.

The food was delicious of course. We had all the normal Thanksgiving stuff. I made brandied cranberries, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and the turkey. (My turkey turned out perfect! I'm quite proud of myself.) Everything else was brought by the guests. We had so much food! We are quite lucky in this country to be able to have so much. Anyway, a good time was had by all and I'm very pleased with how it all turned out.

Today I have KnitWits. It's the distribution meeting. I'm looking forward to it. It's always fun to give out everything we've made to the recipients. My daughter Ruth has the day off from work, so she gets to go with me.

This is my first mobius loop project. The pattern is well written and super easy to knit. The stitch pattern was easy to memorize. This would be a good project for new knitters looking for their first simple lace project.

The yarn is to die for! It's expensive, so I could afford only one skein. It is so soft and warm. It has a nice fuzzy halo and was wonderful to work with.

I made it for me, to go with my purple fur coat. I wore it today. My neck was very happy.

Another project I finished is a set of quilted pot holders. I used leftover fabric from the apron I made last year for my daughter Sarah.

Front

The pattern is a free one I found on the internet: Potholder Mitt . They have a pocket in the front so they can be used as oven mitts as well as pot holders.

Back

This is my official first quilting project. They're no where near perfect. Everything that could be crooked is, and the binding is awful! I'm gonna need lots of practice before I get good at it. I'm happy with them though. For my first, it didn't come out half bad.